By Samantha Cooney
AVON — About 50 people braved the snow and freezing temperatures Saturday to picket in front of Safari Pets on U.S. 36, claiming that the local pet store does business with a “puppy mill.”
Vehicles drove by honking to show support for the protesting.
A second group of protesters was at the Uncle Bill’s Pet Center in Fishers from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. that day, and then bringing their signs to the store here from 2 to 3:30 p.m.
Katie Brophy with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a spokesperson for the group, claimed that Uncle Bill’s Pet Center and Safari Pet stores get puppies from Amish puppy mills in rural Indiana counties.
“These puppies are often sickly or genetically inferior because of the conditions in which they are born,” Brophy said.
A Channel 13 News investigation released a “Puppy Pipeline” report showing where many pet stores receive their puppies. There is also an undercover video posted on the website petshoppuppies.org, that documents conditions in one of the Indiana puppy mills.
Brophy said the puppy mill documented in the video is “typical” of the operations.
“These facilities have large numbers of dogs, sometimes hundreds of dogs, in cages stacked on one another, who live their entire lives in cages, never seeing daylight or having the opportunity to run or play,” she said.
Another problem the group is attempting to highlight is what Brophy characterizes as “the complete lack of inspection or monitoring by any agency.”
Although these operations are supposed to be inspected by the USDA, she said the breeders can get around that by claiming to be “hobby breeders,” making them exempt from the law.
“Therefore, there is no oversight of these facilities,” she said.
The group’s protest was designed to educate the public and to encourage adoption from shelters instead of from pet stores.
Officials with Safari Pets declined to comment and even locked their door during part of the protest.
Hendricks County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Jones remained at the location throughout the picketing. He said the group had obtained a permit and were breaking no laws.
samantha.cooney@flyergroup.com
